Ha! You'd prefer to slam people and have them silently take it, right? Bloggers don't do that. The comfy old days of MSM are gone. Thanks for admitting that you can't handle the new situation where the people you attack have a way of fighting back.

You have just stated the single most important strength of the internet. Trent Lott showed his true colors when he referred to the internet as a problem he has to deal with.

Previously, the only recourse the average citizen had to speak out was to the letters to the editor column in the local newspaper that was usually shredded by a biased editor/publisher.

They don't like it, not one bit! That is their weakness and needs to be exploited. The only defense these cowards have is to resort to ad hominem attacks and strict avoidance of facts replaced by agenda driven talking points.

Pity them. They are condemned to live in their own web of hate and self-pity.

I don't want to get in a battle of who is funnier, but Orr's takedown was pretty damn funny. His ability to be both dismissive of the your acerbic qualities that provide me with constant amusement, and at the same time providing a good rebuttal towards your claims in a short post was quite impressive. Mess with the bull and you get the horns.

vrse: If you really are a UW law grad, I think it's not advisable to be stalking one of the school's professors in the comments to her blog. If you think your behavior is appropriate, consider whether you would feel the same if your identity were known. You said you were leaving before, now go. Frankly, I don't want pseudonymous UW law students/grads writing in the comments unless they also withhold the fact that that is what they are. I'm restricted in what I can say to them. So, time to go, vrse.

Vett 66 said "You have just stated the single most important strength of the internet. Trent Lott showed his true colors when he referred to the internet as a problem he has to deal with.

Previously, the only recourse the average citizen had to speak out was to the letters to the editor column in the local newspaper that was usually shredded by a biased editor/publisher"

I agree with this statement entirely. Thinking about the Duke La Cross players and Nifong, I believe it was the power of the internet that brought this case to a just ending.

How many times in the past have out of control and power hungry people been able to run roughshod over people like the Duke players? Many times. The main difference this time, was that the internet wouldn't let the story be buried and uncovered the injustice that would have been swept under the rug and ignored for political expedience and political correctness. If not for this, those young men would have been in prison for the rest of their lives. Of course it doesn't hurt that they also have means to fight back. Many don't.

The political hacks who have been controlling the information feed are not in power anymore and they hate it. People are able to communicate cross country, share ideas, compare experiences and stand up for themselves in "real time" instead of having their views buried and dismissed.

Watch for a movement soon to limit free speech on the venues that they can't control....the Internet, AM Talk Radio and shows like Fox News.

I still think we need to do a deep analysis of trademark dave's fixation on boxes of wine. There must be something Freudian there. :-)

The Chinese government is so afraid of the freedoms inherent in online writing they have limited their citizen's access to it and punished 'violators'.

In corporate America, similar fear is expressed about both employee and non-employee bloggers, and retaliate by firing the former and trying to sue the latter. E-mail has them concerned as well, for it opens up access to higher-ups as never before.

In the US, both elected officials and the mainstream press are revolted by the incursion of the internet. They resent its shaping of the dialogue, and the flattening effect it has had on the old communications heierarchy.

All are attempts at rendering opaque again what the internet has made transparent. But their efforts will fail.

I agree Orr's response was well-written, but your answers debunked his claims rather neatly. TNR is whimpering about having to deal with the hoi palloi. But now that is is practically free, you can for once fight the man that owns the press.

I would say that if one of my law professors said something bad about me in a public forum, I'd have a chat with the dean or the school president. And I'm sure I'd hear some conciliatory language. My donation in a year may amount to little but it only takes one unhappy alum to start an angry campaign. Students are customers and the worst thing for business is an unhappy customer.

As far as vrse: dude, seriously. You swore this place off the other day, swearing to never come back. This corner of the Internet is not Google. It's not like some unavoidable place. It's absolutely comical to think of you sitting there after swearing off Althouse, stewing, finally coming back, stewing some more, and then giving in and writing tripe after you just couldn't take it any more.

Addendum: I'm defending Althouse's comment about pseudonymous comments. Professors -- particularly in professional school environments, which are intimate and so reliant on networking for success -- are in a strange position when it comes to criticism of former or present students.

The online left has made their tactical signature the vituperative swarm. Such an attack is generally aimed at someone who is still mostly a Democrat, but has voiced disagreement with many issues.

It's very Maoist. Criticism of the Party is an attack on the Party. and all that. To then claim that the recipient of a swarm doesn't play well with others is just, well, bullshit. It's similar to accusing the offender of mental illness.

Simon said it better elsewhere: "These folks' views aren't prevailing in the present system, and since they're such rational, reasonable, sensible people, with rational, reasonable, sensible policy views, obviously, if the system isn't producing winners who agree with their policy views, then the system must be broken."Here, that means those who disagree with their rational, reasonable, sensible policy views are obviously nuts.

But that is a very dangerous road to go down, as one can easily have the method turned against them.

Justin: I have a way of interacting with students that I think is right. It's not the way I interact with people in blogdom. It's a mentor relationship that I believe is appropriate.

7 Machos has it right. A law student might find it interesting to participate here and get outside of the conventional environment. But as soon as you identify yourself as a law student, that can't happen. And I'm not willing to assume my lawprof mentor style with someone who wants the freedom to talk to me in a way that he could not do if he were identified. I'm not going to have a conversation like that. If you want to talk to me as a law student or alumnus, do that, and act like one. But don't come here and insult me and leave me feeling like I have to respond in a tolerant, supportive way.

i have a feeling many of ann's students are wondering how in the hell this woman keeps her job...whether she has what she refers to as "a mentor relationship that I believe is appropriate" or not.

who in their right mind would want ann as a "mentor"...or for that matter, have her on their resume as a professor? (can you imagine a prospective employer asking who you studied under...and you have to tell them it was the onion ring-vagina blogger??)

You seem to be scared, Lucky. Why would you post here so much otherwise? And don't you realize that all the attention and time you waste here is just oxygen? If Althouse is not worth your time, don't spend your time on Althouse.

"But don't come here and insult me and leave me feeling like I have to respond in a tolerant, supportive way."

I'm a 1999 UW Law grad and regular reader and occasional commenter on this blog. I'm a regular reader because I generally appreciate the content here, but am probably somewhat more likely to comment when I happen to disagree with what is said. I try to be respectful in disagreement, though am not above sarcasm etc. when appropriate.

I would hope that Ann would not feel ethically bound to refrain from counter-criticism of my critical comments on that basis. Graduation seems so long ago, I now practice in Indiana, and have never donated anything to UW Law and don't expect to in the future.

I had an article published in the Wisconsin Law Review while I was a student that I'm sure raised the hackles of some of the many liberal professors there, titled "The Fit Between the Elements Between an Informed Consent Cause of Action and the Scientific Evidence Linking Induced Abortion with Increased Breast Cancer Risk" (posted at www.proinformation.net). A reporter doing a story on the article sought comment from several UW professors, who declined comment, presumably from a rationale similar to what Ann cites. That's too bad. I would have loved to have known what they thought. Prof. Kingsfield in The Paper Chase didn't feel he had to be always tolerant and supportive, and though I thought The Paper Chase was a stupid movie, the model doesn't seem too far off from what seems appropriate for a community of grown scholars embarking on the doggy dog world of lawyering.

I remain gratified by the fact that this article was published by a law school widely considered to have one of the most liberal faculties in the nation.

Justin: Institutionally, I have something called academic freedom. We'd have to fight over the limits of that if I spoke to students in an unconventional way. Imagine if I became a very hardcore, sadistic Socratic professor. What would happen? I don't know, but I'm not doing that.

Luckyoldson said."i've followed the onion ring/carrot comments by ann and everything he said is spor on. ann posted insane drivel, then tried to justify it as some kind of inside joke (wink, wink)...which anyone who's not part of the althouse suckfest knows ispure bullshit."

I've said it before and I will repeat it, describing the video: "The man wants the hole-shaped item, and the woman forbids it. She insists that he confine himself to the phallic item, which has been sliced down to puny, thin stick form. The man looks at it sadly, and the woman tells him it's for his own good. If you don't see sexual imagery there, you exist on a very narrow band of human imagination."

I stand by my interpretation, and the protestations have at this point reinforced my belief that it is true. I now believe that it was intentional, because I think Clinton is highly controlled and working with very competent media people. As I wrote in a post last night, the video is a "psychodrama in which she reduced the former President to the role of First Gentleman by taking away his onion rings (≈ sex life) and forcing him to accept carrot sticks (≈ pared down phallus)." I think they were trying to affect your mind, in a way subtle enough to be deniable, and the intensity of the denial -- which is, you must admit, really bizarre -- is evidence of the truth you feel such a need to resist.

Obviously, I'm at most wrong, but you feel the need to call me "insane." Why not just disagree with the interpretation and try to explain why it is wrong? It's that you are so very afraid that it's right.

John Kindley said..."I'm a 1999 UW Law grad and regular reader and occasional commenter on this blog. I'm a regular reader because I generally appreciate the content here, but am probably somewhat more likely to comment when I happen to disagree with what is said. I try to be respectful in disagreement, though am not above sarcasm etc. when appropriate. I would hope that Ann would not feel ethically bound to refrain from counter-criticism of my critical comments on that basis. Graduation seems so long ago, I now practice in Indiana, and have never donated anything to UW Law and don't expect to in the future."

Well, if you don't give us money, who cares? Just kidding. Anyway, you're using your name along with identifying yourself as an alumnus. Plus you aren't using your status as a basis for insulting me and insisting that I change what I say or leave town or some such nonsense. It's not so much the pseudonym/alumnus combo or the disagreement, it's the abuse while claiming a sort of privilege/immunity.

I'm actually happy to have this blog work as a way for alumni to feel connected with the school. For those who don't like me though, they can find some other way to connect to the school than to insist that I don't belong here. Their hostility to free speech and diverse political opinion is contemptible, in my view.

While a comments page allows the use of informal English with cadences from the spoken register, it is nonetheless a written form. Your sentence fragments make you sound like a teenager that is text-messaging his or her friend. So let me ask again. Do you understand the rules of capitalization and punctuation in English or are you only partially literate in the written register?

I should also add that people who cannot write a complete paragraph rarely have anything worthwhile to add to a debate. When we look at your comments above, we note that nothing substantive has been said or argued.

If Althouse needs a shrink for her interpretation of the ad, what did Freud need for his interpretation of the world?

Another thing to consider is shoe-on-the-other-foot: had this been a Republican ad, and had some orthodox leftist put forth the same analysis of the ad, would you call her crazy? No, you wouldn't. Ergo, either you are being deceitful or you are stupid.

I stand by my interpretation, and the protestations have at this point reinforced my belief that it is true. I now believe that it was intentional, because I think Clinton is highly controlled and working with very competent media people....I think they were trying to affect your mind....

Wait a minute...I thought your interpretation was cute and amusing, but you've jumped the shark here. Why on earth would Hillary want to reinforce the already prevalent view that she's a controlling, castrating bitch? If it was intentional she's stupid, and what's worse, your interpretation isn't funny anymore.

"And as for them not commenting on the article, chances are they didn't read it."

Thank you for bursting my bubble. I feel totally unsupported.

At least one who declined comment did read it though, because he came out and told me he didn't want to be quoted re: the law review article for other reasons. And the reporter (who turned out to be not a right-wing but a left-wing hack) who told me that the others declined comment didn't seem to think it was because they hadn't read it.

I assume you haven't read it, or even became aware of it at the time it was published?

I don't think it is self-important of me to think it was and is an important article. After all, a U.S. Congressman who is also an M.D. thought it was significant enough to send copies to every other member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Give me an hour and I could get Ann to sit quietly petting a cat. Getting her detractors to engage in productive thought is another matter entirely. That is the core difference between the two. Ann is mostly rational, her enemies aren't. I'd much rather deal with someone who has an addressable problem than someone with an intractable one.

And as for them not commenting on the article, chances are they didn't read it.

It has been my experience that, in most internet discussions, only one or two of the people participating actually read the article in question. everyone else has their own personal agenda (or baggage) which they trot out for public inspection with great regularity.

Two points. First, I have said nothing about whether I agree or disagree with Ann's take on her argument with that MSM journalist. Second, you've haven't actually said anything yet beyond calling Ann a "queen" and people who follow this blog "sycophants."

I don't recall ever writing that. I guess reading English is also something of a challenge for you. To be honest, I kind of admire you. Without any concern about how you might appear to others here, you nonetheless try to communicate with your stunted sentence fragments. It's like someone smiling with four missing front teeth.

and what, pray tell...does capitalization have to do with having something of "interest" to say??

In your particular case, nothing. Which is why many here usually skip right over your comments. As chance would have it, I saw Simon's comment, knew one answer and provided it because I mistakenly believed you had promised to leave when provided it. On second thought, my guess is that you did not, and that, even if you did, you would not leave anyway because you do not strike me as the kind of person who keeps his (or her) word.

Institutionally, I have something called academic freedom. We'd have to fight over the limits of that if I spoke to students in an unconventional way. Imagine if I became a very hardcore, sadistic Socratic professor. What would happen? I don't know, but I'm not doing that.

That's what I thought when I first read it. But then I thought maybe you were talking about something more concrete, like a written code of conduct for bloggers, or something.

Luckyoldson said...

where's the link, dipstick?

Why do you think you get to make demands here?

Luckyoldson also said...

"if you don't like what i say or how i say it...just don't fucking read it."

Please indicate where I have said anything remotely close to the following: there are plenty of people who agree with ann's premise and promised to provide links.

It's one thing to be stupid and uneducated. Possibly it can't be helped. Lying is another thing altogether. I urge you to be ethical in the future, Lucky; it will enhance your reputation and your life in the long run.

You're clearly deluded. No one here has deemed your text-messages and gutter language as "terrific." You can't string together a consecutive string of thoughts or sentences. You're like one of those talking dolls that has a pull-string in their back.

When we pull your string, you shout, "Queen," "Sycophants," "Don't Fucking Read it." And that's the limit of your thoughts.

Justin: "But then I thought maybe you were talking about something more concrete, like a written code of conduct for bloggers, or something."

No one at the university has ever tried to limit my blogging, and in fact, I have been generously rewarded for it. If they did try to limit me, there is a very vigorous group on campus that I could count on to defend me.

"If Althouse needs a shrink for her interpretation of the ad, what did Freud need for his interpretation of the world?"

Not weighing in on this whole ridiculous debate, but as for Freud, there's a reason why psychologists don't typically use Freudian psychology anymore. It's just that people continue to think that his brand of psychoanalysis is still the main "brand" these days.

As I wrote, I mistakenly believed you had promised to leave when provided it.

second, why would i care about anything you have to say or think about me?

I don't know, why would you? That is your personal problem (or not), not mine.

third, as i mentioned to jeff, your fellow english prose expert

As I have never claimed expertise in English prose, that is an inaccurate characterization.

and ann sycophant

The last time I checked, the definition of "syncophant" is one "who enthusiastically toes the party line." I don't qualify. It seems to me that you have fallen into the habit, so common on the internet, of seeing "Reds under the bed." If someone has the temerity to disagree with you, you take it as proof positive that they are a syncophant of Ann. Just as so many here (and elsewhere) call everyone who does not follow the the party on one single issue, the war in Iraq, "right-wingers." If I was truly the syncophant you make me out to be, you would be able to find multiple posts endorsing and encouraging Ann's recent examination of the deeper meaning of onion rings and carrots. You can't, but that won't stop you using the term because it it fits so conveniently into your narrow tiny compartmentalized mind wherein all and sundry must be properly categorized or stigmitized for future reference. Have fun with that.

if you don't like what i say or how i say it...DON'T FUCKING READ IT. (sorry about the caps)

I feel compelled to ask, "Who died and left you in charge?" Are you in the habit of ordering those you don't know around? As I said, most of the time I don't read your twaddle, but I will read it, or not, as I wish and comment on it, or to you, as I wish, with or without your consent. Our hostess is the only person here whose opinion on such matters counts. Were she to ask me to refrain from posting to or about someone or something, I would do so, as it is her property, not mine. If she asked me to leave, I would do so. For some strange reason, I doubt the same could be said for you.

Okay, I see that you really do have a problem writing English. I'm sorry if I made fun of this obvious deformity. But hey, buddy, I'm here to help you.

Let's start with a simple five-sentence paragraph. First, I want you to try to condense your thoughts down into a single topic sentence that you think you can support with the other four sentences. You suggested above that you have something to say about this blog entry, so take your time and try to write in one sentence that captures your basic claim. Then, for the next thirty minutes or so, see if you can come up with three of four sentences that you believe support that original claim. Ready?

Listen, Luckyoldson, there's no reason that you have to feel ashamed about your inability to write in English like the rest of us here. It will take some time, however. Baby steps for you, Luckyoldson, baby steps.

C'mon. Don't give up! You can learn to write. Haven't you suffered enough from this stigma? Do you still want to walk our village with that large "S" -- for "sub-literate," of course -- emblazoned on your sweater? Just because my eleven-year-old niece could write circles around you, it doesn't mean it's too late for you.

The folks I've known with Trisomy 21 are a lot more mature, communicative and socially well adjusted than Luckyoldson has demonstrated in comments at Althouse.

Your calumny should be withdrawn.

It would be like calling Congress a bunch of prostitutes, prostitutes don't deserve such ill treatment as to be compared to Congressfolk.

I think you'd have to go here to find a more apt comparison for the commenter in question, key items, "...They are considered the loudest land animal...they do not scratch or bite but rather yell and slap...and are of surly disposition...".

Having revisited this site at the end my day and my week, I have come to the conclusion that luckyoldson doesn't have a job or do anything productive. Just imagine if he spends this much time obsessing on this one blog, how many others he clutters up.

So many blogs, so much venom to spit. Wearing his typing fingers to the nubs.

i actually own my own business so i have all the free time i want, and right now i'm on vacation so i have plenty of time to aggravate the living shit out of right wing yahoos like yourself...who are soooooooo full of themselves i'm surprised you don't explode.

No problem. It seems you have been on vacation for quite some time. Perhaps you should go to the coast or camping in the mountains: get out of your basement since being on vacation has made you extremely cranky and somewhat irrational.

:-) this should be good for at least 3 more spittle spewing rants from lucky

Yes, just a little retreat to the local sanitarium to pick up Old Lucky's spirits a bit -- well, in truth, it has been going on for many years by now, hasn't it. The time does pass quickly. I can remember when he first came here his hair hadn't turned grey yet.

Oh yes, Old Lucky's "business." Well, we do humor him and he loves his games of checkers in the afteroon in the main hall. He keeps his "profits" in a wooden-matchstick box he always carries in the pocket of his robe.